Sunday, July 20, 2014

I Might Just Suck At Parenting...

When you have a kid that doesn’t sleep, you start to draw
the conclusion that it’s your fault and thus, you

suck at parenthood. I’ve been in this mode of suckage for about
eleven months, three weeks and six days. You see,
the Nugget does not sleep. Ever. He’s almost a year old and I can count on one
exhausted hand how many times he’s made it even halfway through the night. It’s not really a shock because the Midget
never slept either. Naps do occasionally happen but a schedule? Ah hells no.
Most nights are so horrific I can’t even discuss it without beginning to
tremble like Coco from Fame circa ‘80.

Suffice it to say, I’m tired. And
cranky. So very, very cranky. But aside from giving him a little booze in
his bottle, what can you do? And as my
luck would have it, Nugget is a boob man and wouldn’t dream of taking a bottle.

This crappy-ass sleep pattern that somehow pops up in my
offspring is one of the reasons there is a five year span between these
brothers. See, being a geriatric mother
as I am, I was not willing to risk doing another three to five with no sleep.
When I got knocked up with the Nugget everyone reassured me that “the second
child always knows their place,” and “the second child always just goes with
the flow, it will be much better this time.”
Well that was a load of crap.

Thanks to my little insomniac, I’ve got lots of time in the
wee hours of the night to ponder my parenting

inadequacies and to Google. Bad combo.
I’m a Nancy Drew by nature. I
need answers. I need explanations and I
am prepared to Google until I know exactly why these children born to two
parents who are big fans of bedtime, despise it so. Help me Google, you are my only hope.

Aside from their shared genetics, the only other shared factor are their parents -The Turk and me. They didn’t share the same crib, the
same home or even the same country of origin.
There is nothing about the first year in the life of my little Turks
that is similar except their parents. With this information, the wizards on Google's massive list of mainstream parenting blogs and websites have drawn the conclusion that we are to blame. We suck at parenting. Damn.

If I am to believe all that I’ve read- and of course I do
because everyone knows that there is only absolute truth on the interweb- every
child sleeps in his own bed all night long from the age of 2 months onward and
if they don’t, you suck at parenting. If
you allow your children to sleep in your bed, they will die and you suck at parenting. Additionally, every other child
responds positively to all methods of sleep training and if you don’t train them, you suck at parenting.

I also learned that I suck at parenting because I refer to
my children as Turdnuggets and Buttheads and because I don’t buy a lot
of organic crap. (Though I will admit that I’ve recently started buying some
organic crap because I’ve been watching too much Dr. Oz.)

I suck at parenting because I don’t
always say no to Dunkin’ Donuts and in times of extreme stress and trauma –
like after a trip to the dentist- I medicate with McDonalds.

I suck because I expose them to the news and far worse than
that, Honey Boo Boo.

Mostly, I suck at parenting because my children never sleep and when they do
it’s rarely in their own beds.

But there are things that the parenting experts on the
interweb don’t cover and those more important things are the ones at which I
totally rock and I feel some points should be given for that.

For instance, by the age of 3, the Midget was fluent in class A profanity in two languages– though just the
PG 13 words like ass and damn – even I have the good sense to reserve the big
ones for adolescence.

Thanks to my stellar parenting, my offspring have the good
sense to laugh at fart jokes and point out the fact that peaches often look
like butts.

My parenting has taught the Nugget, at only 11 month, to
flash a spot on “Whach you talkin’ ‘bout Willis” face and to flash his dimples
and grin when his ass is on the line.

Recently,
I’ve also seen great signs of appropriate use of obscene gestures while stuck in
traffic coming from the Midget.

Thanks to my parenting skills, my son knows to take off his
shoes before stepping on the doctor’s scales in order to spare himself an extra
pound.

And nothing warms my heart more than when my oldest corrects
his own grammar, and often that of the Turk.
That’s all me world. All me.

But yesterday it all came to a head. Just when I was getting down about this whole
sleep thing and beginning to think I’d really blown this parenting gig, my 6
year old came running up to me with two pendulous avocados in a container and
said- “look mom, boobs” – I beamed with pride as I laughed myself to the verge of wetting myself. That moment of comedic brilliance alone was proof that I don’t suck at parenting after all.

So perhaps my kids don’t sleep. Ever.
Perhaps they are clingy and scared of their own beds. Big whoop.

They are freaking funny and in the grand scheme of the world, being a
funny guy gets you a lot farther than being a good sleeper. Who ever made enough money to care for their elderly mother sleeping? No one, that's who.